Mushroom Longevity, Appendix Surprise, Brain Health, Biofilm, & Homeopathy vs. Flower Essences

In This Issue: 

• Mushrooms to the Rescue
• Surprise Appendix Discovery
• Homeopathy vs. Flower Essences
• Boost Your Brain
• Clearing Your Yucky Biofilm

Find lots of healthy recipes in my
Whole Food Plant-Based, Gluten Free Recipes Facebook Group

Message from Bernadette Wulf

Greetings!

I love this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere when the days are getting warmer and Nature is bursting with life.

My tomato plants are already halfway up their fence and setting fruit.

Two consecutive plantings of basil promise lots of yummy pesto pasta dinners—something I love to share with my kids and grandkids throughout the summer—gluten-free quinoa-brown rice pasta for me.

Carrots, big white beans, lettuce, and assorted squashes and kales are just getting started, while garlic is almost ready for harvest.

No-till gardening is the way to go. So easy, and it helps maintain the natural structure of the soil and the healthy microbes that feed your plants.

This month I found some great articles on ergothioneine—the longevity vitamin, the real purpose of your appendix (or at least one of them), how to clear out the biofilm that can block absorption of nutrients and probiotics in your gut, tips for keeping your brain healthy, and a brilliant explanation of homeopathy as compared with flower essences.

WulfWorks News

You may have noticed that I’m moving my blogs to Substack. It feels like a community there… much more than I’ve found in any other online platform.

I’m hoping my Substack evolves into a a place where we can connect and interact without all the creep-factors of social media options. Subscribe for free here and share your thoughts in the comments.

If you’re into the magical side of life, I also have low-cost paid Substack tiers for delving deeper into the mystery wisdom of our Celtic ancestors, along with practical applications for living a magical life in the New Earth reality.

Midsummer Playshop

Join us June 20th for Faehallows Midsummer Zoom playshop. This is the time of year when the Nature Spirits of the faery realm are most active and you’ll be guided in Otherworld adventures to meet them. (You’ll be automatically included with the Celtic Year Inner Circle Substack subscription, or you can sign up separately.)

The sign-up page is still in the works, so keep an eye on your inbox (or spam folder) for updates in the week before the 20th. It will be fun!

Meanwhile, don’t forget to get out and enjoy the wonders of Nature… and maybe you’ll meet a few Nature Spirits on your own.

Have questions or comments? —>>> Email Bernadette <<<— Please use this link and do not hit reply to this post or I may never get your message.

To your health and happiness!
Bernadette Wulf
WulfWorks.com — HealItAll.com — Eat Plants for Life
Visit me on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/wulfworks

---

Mushrooms to the Rescue… Tempeh Too

I had never heard of ergothioneine until Dr. Greger recently brought it to my attention.

They call it the “longevity vitamin,” which immediately sparked my interest… not that I want to live to be a hundred and five, but because “Low blood levels of ergothioneine are correlated with increased risk of frailty, cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease.”

All things I would very much like to avoid!

Here’s what Dr. Greger shared:

What are the best dietary sources? It’s not made by plants or animals––only fungi, like mushrooms and certain soil bacteria. Plants can suck some up from the soil, and animals who eat the plants can similarly benefit, but the highest levels by far have been reported in mushrooms. Excessive tillage of the soil, which is a common practice in modern agriculture, can disrupt the mycelial network, the fungi filaments that pass ergothioneine along to the roots of crops, leaving mushrooms and tempeh—a fungi-fermented soybean cake—as the only concentrated dietary sources. [Note: I recently found a chickpea tempeh—ed.] This is on a dry weight basis, though, and mushrooms are like 90 percent water; so, if you change this to prepared wet weight, tempeh does even better on more of a per-serving basis.

That’s great info. Plus, it’s one more reason for no-till farming and gardening. My favorite reason, though, is that I don’t have to dig! I just dump a bunch of compost and other nutrients on top of the soil and plant… and the plants seem to love it.

I will definitely be eating chickpea tempeh a lot more, since I avoid soy most of the time. Chickpea tempeh has a very similar taste and texture to soy tempeh. Anyone have good tempeh recipes? Please share!

Want to make your own chickpea tempeh? Looks pretty easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWHKHXHjx8

Here’s the link to learn more about mushrooms and tempeh for longevity  —
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/friday-favorites-dietary-sources-of-the-longevity-vitamin-ergothioneine/

Click the transcript link below the video if you prefer to read.

---

Surprise Appendix Discovery

All my life I’ve heard that the appendix is an outdated organ that nature somehow forgot to remove as we evolved… as if we humans ever knew more than Mother Nature.

Turns out, it actually has a very important role to play in the health of our gut microbiome.

From goodnesslover.com:

For over a century, the appendix was dismissed as a useless evolutionary leftover—removed without hesitation, ignored by science. But a growing body of research tells a completely different story. Your appendix is a microbial safe house, protecting your most valuable gut bacteria through every disruption your body faces. Removing it carries consequences we’re only beginning to understand. Discover what your appendix actually does and why it matters profoundly.

Check out this fascinating article on the appendix and how it safeguards our gut health — https://goodnesslover.com/blogs/health/appendix-gut-health

---

Homeopathy vs. Flower Essences

There’s a LOT of confusion out there, particularly about homeopathy. I’ve heard people call anything from herbal tinctures to holistic medicine homeopathy, which is so far from the truth it’s hard to even know where to start explaining what homeopathy actually is.

Then there’s the other camp—usually materialistic scientists and allopathic medicine advocates who write it off as complete hogwash. They can’t measure any molecules of “medicine” in the remedies, therefore they assume they are useless.

Sadly, they are not aware of the energetic memory of water, which is the one thing homeopathy and flower essences have in common… and the reason these remedies can have such profound healing effects.

This is a massive subject that I obviously can’t cover in a short post, but if you’ve ever been curious about how these energetic healing tools work—or why so many people swear by them (including me)—Seneca does the best job of explaining it, and comparing flower essences with homeopathic remedies, that I’ve ever found.

From FreedomFlowers.com:

Flower essences and homeopathy share a neighborhood. They are both small bottles, both highly diluted, both working on a level mainstream pharmacology doesn’t measure, both dismissed by people who haven’t looked carefully. That part is fair.

Past that, they are two different practices. Different inventors, different decades, different preparation methods, different operating logic, different regulatory categories, different dosing instructions, and different theories of how healing happens.

Note: Though she talks about the water base of each of these modalities, we often find homeopathic remedies for sale in the form of small pills. These are usually some form of sugar with the remedy water sprayed on them, so don’t be confused by that. Homeopathic remedies always start out with water.

Read the whole explanation of the hows and whys of homeopathy vs. flower essences — https://blog.freedom-flowers.com/flower-essences-vs-homeopathy/

---

Boost Your Brain

The brain is arguably the most important organ in the body—certainly the most irreplaceable. So protecting it from damage may be one of your top health priorities, yet many of us do things every day that could threaten the health of our brains.

The one that popped out as a red flag for me was Excessive Screen Time, but I was happy to see that was explained as “disordered screen use.” I spend a lot of time writing blogs, doing research, meeting with people on Zoom, and creating illustrations for my posts, but none of that is disordered, so I guess that lets me off the hook. Even so I know it would do me good to spend more time away from screens.

What pops out for you on the list below?

From Zonia.com:

The 7 Most Detrimental Habits for Your Brain

1. 1. The SAME Daily Routine
   2. Drinking Alcohol
   3. Sedentary Lifestyle
   4. Excessive Screen Time
   5. Excessive Sugar Intake
   6. Insufficient or Poor Sleep
   7. Exposure to Consistent Air Pollution

5 Habits to Improve Cognitive Function

1. 1. Meditate
   2. Support Your Gut
   3. Take Magnesium Supplements
   4. Move Your Body
   5. Break Your Routine

Each item on these lists is explained and supported more fully in the original post—but you know me. I’ll always give you the basic info. right up front and you can decide whether you want to learn more or not. That’s how I roll.

Read more about how to protect your brain — https://zonia.com/the-7-most-detrimental-habits-for-your-brain-5-tips-to-improve-cognitive-function

---

Clearing Your Yucky Biofilm

Here’s an article that explains how harmful bacteria and yeast can form resistant “biofilms” in the gut—slimy fortress-like layers that shield nasty microbes from helpful antimicrobials, probiotics, and even your immune system.

From goodnesslover.com:

You’ve tried the protocols. The antimicrobials, the probiotics, the elimination diets. Things improve for a while — and then the bloating comes back. The fatigue returns. The symptoms that were supposed to be gone are back like they never left.

If that’s your story, there’s a good chance nobody has told you about biofilms.

It’s not the most glamorous topic. But once you understand what they are and what they do, a lot of chronic gut symptoms start to make a whole lot more sense.

These slimy microbial hideouts may be one reason people struggle with recurring bloating, Candida, SIBO, and digestive issues that never seem to fully go away.

The article suggests a variety of natural compounds believed to help disrupt biofilms, including NAC, garlic, oregano oil, curcumin, cranberry, and enzymes like serrapeptase and nattokinase.

The most interesting part? Timing really matters. Breaking down biofilms first may make antimicrobial treatments much more effective, because unwanted microbes have simply been hiding behind a slimy microscopic shield.

Read more about gut healing and breaking down biofilms — https://goodnesslover.com/blogs/health/biofilms-natural-disruptors